The ability to meter value bearing indicia (VBI) for printing in the form of postage indicia has been available for an appreciable amount of time. For example, postage meters using mechanical postage value “vaults” have been widely used in businesses throughout the world for printing postage indicia, commonly referred to as meter stamps, on an as-needed basis. In more recent years, electronic systems were developed using electronic postage value vaults to provide improved security. The evolution of such electronic systems has ultimately led to the development of postage metering systems which allow remote metering operations using communications via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and the Internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,777 entitled “System and Method for Remote Postage Metering,” U.S. Pat. No. 6,671,813 entitled “Secure On-Line PC Postage Metering System,” and U.S. Pat. No. 7,149,726 entitled “Online Value Bearing Item Printing,” the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, show various electronic VBI metering systems facilitating remote metering operations.
In providing remote metering operations, the electronic metering systems have typically implemented specialized metering technology both at a user's site and the site remote thereto (e.g., a centralized metering site). Even where otherwise open systems are utilized, such as personal computer (PC) platforms or other general-purpose processor based systems, specialized metering technology in the form of a postage metering application or client has generally been required. Although providing vast improvements in availability to users and intuitive, robust user interfaces, the use of such specialized metering technology tends to limit the use of such metering systems. For example, in order for a PC user to interact with a remote postage server in order to obtain and print a VBI, such as in the form of a postage indicia, the user must generally download, or otherwise install, one or more specialized software applications which are adapted for interacting with the remote postage server. Such specialized software applications have often been required in order to enforce security paradigms with respect to the obtaining and printing of value, such as in the form of the VBI.
Although the current state of technology would not prevent an embodiment wherein a general purpose user interface application, such as a web browser application (e.g., INTERNET EXPLORER available from Microsoft Corporation, NETSCAPE available from Netscape Communications, Safari available from Apple Inc., and Firefox available from Mozilla Corporation), was used with respect to remote metering operations, the general belief is that the open nature of such general purpose user interface applications is not compatible with the desired level of security. For example, general purpose user interface applications generally facilitate user freedom with respect to printing, accessing content for copying into an electronic clipboard, etc.
Such freedom with respect to general purpose user interface applications can lead to even the casual user performing unpermitted or otherwise undesired activities. For example, a user might simply select a print menu (e.g., FILE|PRINT) in order to print multiple copies of a VBI. Similarly, a user might manipulate a pointing device (e.g., mouse) in order to select and copy a VBI for pasting into another software application, such as for duplicating, modification, storing, etc.